Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Wedding Photos

http://synik.myvnc.com:8008/~schell/pujas_wedding/pujas_wedding.html

The page is about 16 megs.

I might have said some somewhat inflammatory things about people. Rachel, tell me if I need to do some editing before wedding people see it. We did have some weird pact about sharing photos, right?

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Puja and Sunjeev's Wedding

Puja's wedding was lots of fun. I had kind of a lame thanksgiving where I went to work and then afterwards played videogames. The next morning I flew out to LAX. My first flight was delayed because one of the flight attendants was running late. Very late. We were supposed to leave at 10AM, but by 11:30 the guy still hadn't showed up and people were pissed. Eventually one of the workers got on a speaker and said "We've receieved confirmation that the flight attendent is in the airport, it shouldn't be long now!" Then like 30 minutes later a guy in the a flight attendent uniform comes strolling down the walkway. Everyone was watching him and a bunch of people were standing but there were no cheers, just lots and lots of angry faces. I was upset too. This asshole thinks he can just sleep in late, he should be billed for my time and every other person on that plane. We were already highly irritated and this man's casual stroll up to the gate was not helping anything. I was about to stand up on my chair and yell "Lynch the bastard!" when saw him display some fairly feminine mannerisms while talking to his coworkers. That stopped me. Far be it from me to incite a possible hate-crime. Later we found out that he wasn't the originally scheduled flight attendent anyway. The original flight attendent got in a car accident or something on the way to the airport and just never showed up so this guy was filling in.

From LAX I picked up a rental car, probably wisely went with the GPS option and then tried to drive to the hotel. But the GPS was fixated on the car rental as a destination, so I did a large loop back to Avis and it told me I had arrived. Finally I did get to the hotel, but everyone was at Puja's night-before dinner which was somewhere else (I didn't know where) so I went to Jack in the Box and watched tv in the hotel room. Fast food isn't as good as it used to be. People got back from the dinner at like 11:30 and I briefly said hello to Puja and talked a bit with Rachel, and then went to sleep.

Puja, without prior warning, called our room at 7AM to come have breakfast with her. It was a pretty good buffet spread, so we ate, then went to Target and bought a bunch of random stuff people needed. Hmmm, oh, then I drove around with Rachel looking for somewhere to get lunch. I thought we were driving toward Disneyland because I had passed it on the way to the hotel the evening before, but apparently I got all confused and totally drove the wrong way. Oh well. Rachel and I were wearing matching "I survived Puja and Sunjeev's wedding" shirts, on the back of which said "Just Married". And we got congradulated by some random people on our new marriage. Rachel quickly corrected them :)

The wedding itself was pretty interesting. Sunjeev road around the hotel on a horse. Rachel and the other bridesmaids (wearing Indian wraps) carried candles around and weren't allowed outside to see the horse because they were women on the bride's side. Then there was a long series of blessings and symbolic actions. The whole thing took a few hours. There was an open bar afterwards and a pretty good dinner and some dancing (which I actually participated in and was having an alright time, up until the bar closed toward the end of the night and I started sobering up).

There was an after-party at Puja and Mehrnaz's room, where we played cards. F*** The Dealer (where I somehow guessed cards amazingly well, and got the majority of the cards on the first try, and pretty much all the rest on the second try, only having to drink like twice), Kings (Puja's old coworkers have no skills in the "Questions" event), and Asshole (it took me two hands to make it to president and then I only stayed there for two hands before getting ousted. But we were playing without the President getting any tribute and I think I would have done well if we had been doing that.) We had a truely atrocious selection of liquor. No beer at all. I drank rum and coke (horrible, foul stuff) until the rum ran out and then I started drinking tequilla and coke, which was exponentially worse.

I didn't get much sleep at all, and the next morning my rental car's GPS decided to take me in a nice circle several times before finding a gas station. Then getting back to the rental place was impossible, I circled around for like 30 minutes because the stupid thing said "Avis Rental on the left" but there was nothing on the left. Finally I used the rental place's address and just hunted it down the old-fashiond way. I missed my flight but got a standby flight about an hour later. Then I was unable to board 2 standby flights in Chicago, and they wanted me to wait until 6am the next morning! So instead I got a flight to Dulles and got in at about 4am. My baggage went to Reagan but was easily picked up later.

Photos coming soon.

(Much to Dave's disappointment, at Tom's wedding all girls around college age were lesbians)
Dave: They shouldn't be allowed to have lesbian bridesmaids! That should be a rule!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Professional Bowler Right Here

Just looking at the old playstation game "Tactics Ogre" on Amazon. The game was released in 1995, but the cheapest used copy of the game for sale is $70. And the cheapest new copy.. $350. Rediculous. Well, I just sold my playstation 2 anyway, and I'm not getting a playstation 3 until the new Tekken comes out. In the mean time I guess I'll do something more productive than play strategy games.

I went bowling for Eric's birthday Saturday and I beat Eric, Dave, John Sawyko, and Jon Reiling. Usually Eric does a little better than me, but not this time. I think it's because the other guys have been dabbling in that bowling with the little mini-ball and pins and it's thrown off their game. I got like 135 the first game, and 160 the second game, which put me about 5 points ahead of Eric each time (Eric came in second on both games). Oh, there's another possibility. Eric threw a strike as the very first throw of the first game, but Jon had forgotten to hit the "start bowling" button so it didn't get counted. And Eric was pissed and had to re-throw and ended up getting like 7 for that frame. It was pretty humerous but nobody laughed too loudly because Eric felt robbed. That bad start might have thrown him off for the rest of the night.

Also last weekend there was a dinner at Dave's and he cooked up this stuff called "Leche de la tigre" (Tiger's milk). It's some drink with egg, milk, sugar, and rum, and was really good. Well, the first cup was good, after that it started to make me feel sick. After the dinner we went to a sort of pretentious party at Dave's neighbor's place, and I had some Coors to settle my stomach. Despite Liza's opinions otherwise, there were no hot girls at this party. Saturday there was a party at Val's place way out in northeast dc. It was a good time, though kinda quiet, as parties go. We ended up getting a rid back from some sketchy girls with Eric's friend Jason, who I detest but managed to not yell at through the whole car trip.

Did you know that if there was a hole through the center of the earth, from here to China, it'd take more than 21 hours of free-fall to reach the other side. That's if you're shooting through with your arms tucked to go as fast as possible. It could take more like 70 hours if you have your arms out to catch the wind. That movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is absolutely incorrect, and there's no way you could walk that far in your lifetime. These are the troubling things that occupy my thoughts at work on Monday. (Obviously the heat from the earth's core will probably burn you up before you make it though. And the reversal of gravity after you pass the center would mean you'd only make it a couple miles beyond the center before reversing direction and falling back toward the middle again. I'm not sure whether you'd be weightless or what when you're actually in the center there. You might feel 1/2 gravity in each direction, sort of tugging at all sides, which would be strange.)

(from a column by videogame writer Jeff Vogel)
I play a lot of World of Warcraft - like everyone else on the planet. The other week, for the first time, I bought some gold. That's right. I spent some of my real, actual money for imaginary gold. It felt so good.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Joe gets lectured

I got lectured recently about Knocked Up. I made the mistake of comparing it to Superbad. "Superbad had some hilarious dialogue and Knocked Up really didn't. Also Knocked Up had too much pregnancy and birth stuff. " That last line was a mistake. Apparently the scenes of giving birth are not disturbing, nor overly graphic, as I mistakenly thought at first. Instead it's such a beautiful, natural event that men need to learn to appreciate and be in awe of it.

First: bullshit. I don't eat dinner while watching the surgery channel for the same reason. The insides of the human body are pretty disgusting. And birth scenes are even worse because people are always yelling and the lady is usually grunting and screaming in the most disturbing way. It's like a mixture the surgery channel and a war movie, where people are screaming and bombs are going off. Also, new born babies are too gooey.

Second, I hate getting lectured. And it doesn't happen very often, because from most people I wouldn't take it. If most anyone had told me the same thing I'd have responded, "I completely disagree with everything you just said, and I think you're a lesser person for having said it. You've confused your personal opinions with global facts." Or if it was Eric, I'd just say "You're full of shit." Becsause we disagree about this sort of thing regularly. Instead, I was actively trying to get along with this girl (something that I do very, very rarely) and I had to really try to see her point.

"Hmm, that's a good point. I'll think on it." That, my friends, is what a Joe-lie sounds like.

(from an IEEE analysis of the recent international space station computer failure. They concluded it was caused by a power short caused by condensation on a power transformer that was depended on by all 3 of the triply-redundant systems)
"It is dismaying that after decades of experience with manned space stations, Russian space engineers still couldn't keep unwanted condensation at bay. But what's worse is that they designed circuitry that would allow one spot of corrosion to fell a supposedly triply redundant control computer complex. Another cause for dismay is that when trouble did develop, the Russians' first instinct was to blame their American partners."

Thursday, November 8, 2007

knocked up

Just watched Knocked Up for the first time. Pretty funny, but it would have been better without the pregnant chick. That's right, I said it. The parts with the guy friends are funnier. And this chick stopped being hot as soon as she started whaling up. Whitney has tried to insist that pregnancy is beautiful, but it's not really. Disproportionately fat girls are not hot, irrationally angry girls are not hot, and newborn babies are all slimey and disgusting. Wow, i'm being so negative.

My new computer is working. I'm give away this old one. If any of you need a moderately crappy (though fully functional) computer just let me know.

Oh, and some new photos were posted.

Whitney: coach, louis vutton- or something spelled like that
Whitney: kate spade-
me: what's that, brands?
Whitney: all good brands.
me: ah
me: the girls i know carry tiny little bags that can't really hold anything
me: what brand is that?
Whitney: stupid.
me: stupid because you don't know?
me: buuuurn
Whitney: ohh.
Whitney: burn. it was.

Monday, November 5, 2007

"Nada Mucho"

This Thursday I have a test at work, and I was supposed to study last weekend but I totally forgot. Having a test at work sounds kinda weird, but we don't do it often. It's only for the employees that management suspects are a little too slow for this job. Ha, not really. I don't think my supervisor suspects that yet.

Went to a post-halloween party in Columbia Heights last Saturday. I was a goth "blind date from hell", complete with a wilted flower. Liza helped me spike my hair using blue hair gel, and it came out surprisingly well. Dave said I should consider it as my permenant hair style. I don't think I'm going to do that just now though, maybe later.

I'm listening to Manowar. They're a heavy metal group, and so, so much better than Metallica or whatever else you'd consider trashy heavy metal. I don't really understand their fetish for illustrations of heavily muscled mostly-naked dudes, nor am I generally impressed with Norse mythology, but some of their songs are really great. You have to sift through a lot of drool overly-dramatic crap to find it, but when you do it's like striking gold. They have maybe 10 albums. I went through them all, and sorted out maybe 45 minutes of glorious rock anthems. Well worth the trouble too, if they only played these songs in concert it would be the best concert since Andrew WK's first album. Unfortunately the concerts are probably filled with barely clothed bodybuilder guys with long hair and dripping sweat. Possibly the least attractive mosh pit ever. And they only tour in Europe, so there you go. All that and BO to boot. I'll stick with the albums.

(we may have new rules in the office soon that limit a client's number of RCEs)
Spittle: They told me they're not allowed to RCE because of the new rules.
me: The new rules aren't going into effect yet.
Spittle: Yeah but they're worried that it might go into effect retro-actively and they don't want to bust their nut early by using one up.
me: Umm. You probably shouldn't use that phrase around the office.
Spittle: Hey, that's what the lawyer just told me on the phone. He said "We don't want to bust a nut too early."

Thursday, November 1, 2007

computer issues

I got my new computer yesterday but it does not work. It's probably my fault. First, I'm not sure if my old power supply is powerful enough. I bought the thing like 3 years ago and have no idea what it's wattage is. Second, I'm using a 20-pin power supply for a 24-pin power plug. I read on the internet that it should work so long as you line up the right pins, but who knows. And finally, I manually adapted a special super-quiet cpu fan I bought so that it works on this cpu socket that is wasn't designed for. The whole operation involved shaving plastic off the cpu mounting socket with a pen knife and putting a piece of sponge in as extra material to press the fan down on the processor. It's kinda shady. Now the computer powers up, as far as I can tell anyway, but nothing displays on the screen. I should plug in a harddrive and see if it tries to access it. Also I think I'm going to pick up a better power supply after work today at best buy. I wish there was a better computer store in the area but there isn't. Oh well, I'll figure it all out eventually.

Listening to Warp 11. They're not a very popular band, but I like them. They imitate other bands' musical styles and only write songs about star trek. Star trek mixed with sex, in every conceivable way. They're constantly mentioning Kirk's alien-girl fetish, weird borg sex with Seven-of-Nine (and through her, the whole borg collective), holodeck porn, and my favorite: "Prime Directive's gonna make my dick explode." Classy stuff, that's why I like it.

(from a "Dungeons & Dragons" movie review)
"Irons here jumps from crazed overacting to the ultimate overacting experience of a lifetime. If overacting as a villain was a fuel, Jeremy Irons would have just powered the entire planet from now until the end of time. He goes beserko! "